Wedgeguy wrote:Sounds more like you need to do a rebuild of Cedar north of Nokomis like they did on S Lyndale. You see how the traffic backs up on Cedar as it is with the current cloverleaf to west bound 62. I'd rather see traffic backed up south of 58th between 58th and 62 than on 77 itself. I don't see why doing something similar to what they did with South Lyndale would not work on Cedar while keeping the bridges over the lake.

Southbound traffic backs up on the bridge (due to the stoplight at the south end) but not south of there. It's smooth sailing once past Fat Lorenzo's. Traffic doesn't even back up northbound. The backup is to get onto 62 - which is why a flyover and six laning the short stretch over to 35W seems like an excellent trade for massive calming of Cedar. Even in rush hour it is rare to sit through more than one cycle northbound at the Fat Lorenzo's stoplight.

The problem with making Cedar more like Lyndale is the constrained ROW. Lyndale at 54th is 100' from the outsides of the sidewalk. The 4700 block of Cedar (the Carbone's Cluster) is just over 70'. North of 47th is 60', and Hennepin County has balked repeatedly at adding left turn lanes at 42nd/38th (we've tried).

Sounds more like they need to rebuild the 77 and 62 interchange to include a west bound fly over. I really don't see how you plan on getting rid of the same number of car if you still have the same access, but tighter confines that people will have to deal with. How many times have we restricted traffic only to have it create more and worse problems in other area. Sound like traffic lights need to be added. That in itself might help deter traffic on Cedar and push it to another route. I just see major headaches south of the parkway with people going thru residential streets to get to where they want to go to the north.

mattaudio wrote:
Regarding the bridge, removal is not a part of the Nokomis-Hiawatha Regional Park Master Plan. I received a reply from the landscape architect who is MPRB staff for the commission. He said it was not a proper role of the park board or this commission to weigh in on a "regional transportation" topic.

Pages of replies, and no-one has pointed out the absurdity of this statement with the MPRB's current lawyering up against the SWLRT.

How is 35W a bottleneck? Hundreds of millions were just spent expanding the commons from 6 to 13 lanes at Nicollet. The northbound bottleneck was avoided as a result of the LPA project in 2009, and the section from 42nd to Downtown will see further change within the next few years. The southbound bottleneck exists because the Crosstown Commons were designed for 6 lanes at the ends of the commons, and there are only 4, resulting in backups leaving both ends of the commons on 62.

I can't believe I'm defending the thought of a freeway expansion, but the bottleneck fears are unmerited, and it may be a pragmatic way to ease pressure off of neighborhood streets.

It remains to be seen if future improvements will in fact fix the northbound bottleneck that undeniably currently exists. While the back-ups to westbound 94 should be improved, I haven't seen anything that would indicate that the problems through the commons (that regularly cause back-ups all the way back to 46th Street, even at off peak times) are going to be addressed.

Anecdotally, the ones that I experience regularly, and the ones that you, anecdotally, are able to miss. No doubt through dark wizardry.

It's very clear (to me) that the Crosstown Commons was acting as a bottleneck that throttled down access to the south Minneapolis section of 35W, in much the same way that ramp meters work. When that was reconstructed, but the downtown Commons was not, the bottleneck just shifted further north, causing back-ups. Ta da.

My point being that the 77/62 interchange is currently similarly throttling back access to 35W, and fixing that without fixing the other bottlenecks will make things worse.

Please tell me with a straight face that the downtown Commons makes any sense as a way to deal with the intersection of the two busiest roads in the entire state. We're not talking about infinitely expanding capacity; we're talking about fixing a glaringly obvious deficiency.

mattaudio wrote:I received a reply from the landscape architect who is MPRB staff for the commission. He said it was not a proper role of the park board...to weigh in on a "regional transportation" topic.

Road users get:
- a third lane on 62 in each direction between 35W and 77
- a flyover ramp from NB 77 to WB 62
- a better non-cloverleaf ramp from WB 62 to SB 77

The citizens of S MPLS get:
- Cedar Ave bridge over Nokomis gone (obviously)
- 77 north of 62 removed. That can mean a stoplight transitioning the freeway to a blvd or maybe just truncate it altogether
- the two lobes of the cloverleaf south of 62 go away. Any access to NB Cedar would be via conventional ramps
- 58th, 57th, Woodlawn all reconnected to Cedar—across Cedar in the case of 58th and Woodlawn

Edit: I did read many of the comments/ideas on the aforelinked streets.mn post. Go there for more rigorously thought-out suggestions.

I would love to see what this would cost... it's truly a great compromise for both suburban commuters, as well as those living in South Minneapolis from Bloomington Ave S all the way to Hiawatha Ave S.

I agree with everything above, but I also think improvements would have to be made on 62 East of 77 as well. If drivers on northbound 77 had the option of dedicated highway heading east to 55 that would with the 35W concerns that people are talking about. In alot of ways 55 is the setup to how current Cedar Ave drivers treat cedar.

Hiawatha has too many stoplights for people to go out of their way to use to get to parts of SE MPLS. You are back tracking close to a mile to get to 55 and then if you are going to SE MPLS you are looking at having to head back into the neighborhood you want.

seanrichardryan wrote:I'd bargain the bridge for decent capacity and Improved ramps on 62 between 35w and 77.

Amen!

So here's the trade...

Road users get:
- a third lane on 62 in each direction between 35W and 77
- a flyover ramp from NB 77 to WB 62
- a better non-cloverleaf ramp from WB 62 to SB 77

The citizens of S MPLS get:
- Cedar Ave bridge over Nokomis gone (obviously)
- 77 north of 62 removed. That can mean a stoplight transitioning the freeway to a blvd or maybe just truncate it altogether
- the two lobes of the cloverleaf south of 62 go away. Any access to NB Cedar would be via conventional ramps
- 58th, 57th, Woodlawn all reconnected to Cedar—across Cedar in the case of 58th and Woodlawn

Edit: I did read many of the comments/ideas on the aforelinked streets.mn post. Go there for more rigorously thought-out suggestions.

I've lived in this area for about 15 years and this all sounds excellent.

Fat Lorenzo's is absolutely our favorite pizza place but we almost always get take-out. Who wants to sit outside on a sliver of sidewalk (which always seems to have a leaking hose dumping water onto the sidewalk inexplicably) next to a highway?

It would be excellent to get rid of the bridge and create a nice parkway west of the lake/lagoons. I'll bet that the nice homes that currently front this little used lane would be absolutely apoplectic at the idea however. It also seems tricky to get from Fat Lorenzo's out to the highways but you engineering types seem to have some solutions. As I've said, I've lived around here for 15 years and find Cedar Avenue as the quickest way between two points, NOT a destination which is mind-blowing considering the lake AND the creek and what should be a nice commercial node at Minnehaha Parkway which my family and I have always avoided as a car-centric, "strip mall" with parking lots fronting the commercial uses (YUCK!).

The way Lyndale transitions to the highways has a completely different feel than Cedar to the highways. On Lyndale, there are MASSIVE boulevards and adjacent greenspaces with very little in the way of commercial activity as you start to approach the highways on southbound Lyndale. In fact, while we are redoing everything, can we wipe out the sad old motels along south Lyndale and get some development going down there?

Archiapolis wrote:The way Lyndale transitions to the highways has a completely different feel than Cedar to the highways. On Lyndale, there are MASSIVE boulevards and adjacent greenspaces with very little in the way of commercial activity as you start to approach the highways on southbound Lyndale. In fact, while we are redoing everything, can we wipe out the sad old motels along south Lyndale and get some development going down there?

I stared at the satellite view of Lyndale/MN121 for a while last week when this thread was so hot because it seems so similar on the surface while being so very different. I really wanted to come up with a way to terminate 121 somewhere between 61st and 58th and reconnect the grid through there. Unfortunately, I don't see a straightforward way of doing so. Seedy motels and a cemetery aside, Lyndale between 56th and MN62 could be a great street. It's unfortunate that the Commons redo maintained the flyover and loop. A NB 35W -> Lyndale Ave ramp would have been great and a Lyndale -> SB 35W ramp would have been doable.

On the bright side, the Commons redo seriously slimmed down the profile of 121 right at the loop to WB 62. From 56th to the loop, the two lanes in either direction are serious overkill and the terrible state of the pavement gives me hope that particular section could be torn up and redone in a grid-friendly way when the time comes to rebuild. Build it in the model of Lyndale north of 56th: wide median, single lane in either direction. Add intersections at 61st, 60th, 59th, and 57th. A not-insignificant amount of land could be reclaimed on the west side, especially between 56th and 58th. The entire current setup just seems...wasteful.

The problem with being an introvert online is that no one knows you're just hanging out and listening.